Religion in the making

When you ascribe to a religion, you’re ultimately downloading a metaphysics “plugin” to your life “browser”. You’ve added a feature, and this feature should add something beneficial to your user experience, but what? As Bard and Soderquist have noted in several of their books, in previous era, the elites of the society are those that understood how power flowed, and this was facilitated by having a grasp of the new metaphysics. In Capitalism, the Humanist metaphysic illuminated shortcuts around problems felt by the Theistic model and feudalism. The rigidity of the Law had no room for subtly. The King, a vassal of God Almighty, ruled in absolutes. The humanist, circumvents theocratic mandate, and asks for consensus of the citizens. This allows for individual interpretation–if backed by consensus. This allows for nuance. This makes Jean Valjean immediately redeemable to the reader of Les Misérables, yet an obvious criminal to Javert (the antagonist whom tirelessly pursues Jean in order to rectify his antiquated perceived affront to justice). The beauty of this book lying in it’s historicity, it’s positioned right after the Industrial Revolution. The audience at this point almost exclusively has humanist blinders, “the protagonist is obviously in the right! It’s not even a question that the law is flawed, it doesn’t account for the nuance of his situation!” Does syntheism provide this same filter to our perception in late-capitalism/early attentionalism?

I imagine for most people, the most difficult part of the (a)theism conversation is realizing that dichotomies often do not exist in Nature, let alone metaphysics. When a budding syntheist begins to shy away from the Hegelian dialectic between theism and atheism, it’s likely because they have the intellectual flexibility to see two sides as one in the same coin. The theistic God is non-existent in one sense, but is fundamentally the “awe” humanist scientists find in Nature. God is The One, i.e. everything, but when God is everything, that God-concept is no longer useful and fundamentally non-existent. The Syntheist, understands this, and chooses to embrace the nihilism by creating their own God. Synthesizing the previous dialectic, and plowing forth. This ability to synthesize dichotomies is paramount in modernity. The simplicities of pre-internet life are very quickly fading. Increasingly, everyone will have access to the entire wealth of human knowledge updated an inordinant times a second, accessible from their smartphone, their smart-watch, their smart car, their internet of things. There is no online/offline dichotomy, we are swimming in a sea of WiFi signals. Just as I may be online and zoning out in front of a webpage or offline and being pinged by my smart phone, we are both online/offline and then some.

The Syntheist can no longer see dichotomies, and no longer wants to. The Syntheist ad-block is not an acknowledgement of a pop up, with another slightly less annoying pop-up in the corner of your eye. We’re talking, “I have completely forgotten what ads looks like” (and I’m sure if you’re reading this, you probably have in the literal). Syntheism means that soon enough dualism will no longer exist in your cognitive vocabulary. Pre-attentionalist thinking is met with re-routing. It means in day-to-day life, you will actively engage in a dialectic with the knowledge that there exists a combination between the two, it means thinking “both, and..” The syntheist plug-in absolved you of the tireless oscillation between opposites, and allows for you to move forward. The user is not delegated to an eternalization and it’s complement, but rather the ease of motion that mobilism provides allowing for a future eternalization should it be convenient.

Verily I say, “…but seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto thee!” (Matthew 6:33)

“The doer alone learneth” (Friedrich Nietzsche)

The Syntheist seeks not Truth (with a capital T), but seeks to reason and uses this as a platform to further their understanding of the Universe they live in. Uses it to exist within the “Kingdom of God,” or to “flourish” within our Universe. They act rather than passively allowing life to abscond from them. Your handy dandy syntheist ad-block allows the user to continue on their path and facilitate their flourishing, so that all these things and more shall be added unto thee!